The field of the present invention relates to archery bows. In particular, an arrow rest assembly for an archery bow is disclosed herein.
An arrow rest is a structural member attached to an archery bow, typically on the bow's riser or handle, that is arranged to support the shaft of the arrow when the bow is drawn or shot. Such support of the shaft can typically enable the archer to shoot more accurately.
Early examples of arrow rests typically comprised rigid, fixed structures. However, such structures interfere with the fletching of the arrow as the fletching passes the arrow rest during shooting of the arrow with the bow, reducing arrow velocity and degrading the accuracy of the bow. This interference could be reduced somewhat, but not eliminated, by a variety of adaptations. In one example, the fixed arrow rest is made somewhat resilient to reduce interference with the fletching. A resilient arrow rest can be made by resiliently biasing (e.g., with a spring) a rigid rest into its support position, or by forming the rest using one or more resilient materials. In another example, a rigid arrow rest is arranged to facilitate passage of the fletching, e.g., by having a bifurcated or forked end of the rest that contacts the arrow, leaving a gap for passage of the fletching. The width of such a gap is limited to less than the arrow shaft diameter, and effectiveness of such an arrangement depends on proper alignment of the fletching of the nocked arrow with the gap.
Later arrow rests were developed using a “fall-away” design wherein the arrow rest is spring or resiliently biased downward (i.e., away from the arrow) and pulled upward to the arrow-supporting position by drawing the bow. This movement is typically achieved by connecting (e.g., with a connecting tie or similar structure) the arrow rest to one of the bow's cables, so that movement of that cable during drawing of the bow pulls the arrow rest up into its arrow-supporting position. The arrow rest is therefore in proper position to support the front end of the arrow when the bow is drawn. Upon firing the bow, movement of the bow's cables releases tension on the connecting tie and enables the arrow rest to nearly immediately fall away from the arrow in response to the bias on the rest. Such a fall-away rest moves out of the path of the arrow fletching, but typically only supports the arrow during a relatively small portion of its flight while it is still in contact with the draw cable. While the elimination of interference of the rest with the fletching is desirable, it is achieved at the expense of support of the arrow during only a very limited portion of its flight during firing of the bow.
It is therefore desirable to provide a fall-away arrow rest that substantially reduces or eliminates interference between the arrow fletching and the rest while nevertheless supporting the arrow shaft during a majority of its flight during shooting of the arrow by the bow.
A wide variety of arrow rests or arrow rest assemblies are available. One example is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,044,832 entitled “Fall-away arrow rest assembly” issued Apr. 4, 2000 to Piersons.